Biography

Contact info: Donna Hughes
Donna@DonnaHughes.com

Track Listing:
01 Cut Your Losses 3:26
02 Nothing Easy 2:50
03 Saying Hello 3:28
04 Dr. Jekyl, Mr. Hyde 2:50
05 Butterfly 4:46
06 Jesse 3:08
07 Last Thing I Need 4:22
08 Losing You 4:08
09 God Don’t Make Mistakes 3:58
10 Mid-life Crisis 3:52
11 Autumn Leaves 2:59
12 If I Had You 3:40
13 Blackbeard 3:18
14 Longing For You 2:43
15 Better Apart 3:01

All 15 songs written by Donna Hughes, Flying Hound Publishing, BMI.

Produced by JD Crowe
Associate Producer: Steve Chandler
Engineered by Steve Chandler at Hilltop Studios, Nashville, TN
Mixed by Steve Chandler and JD Crowe
Mastered by Toby Mountain at Northeastern Digital Recording, Southboro, MA

Even in the 21st century, when artistic barriers are falling fast, the urge to categorize music remains a powerful one. Much of the time, that’s all right, but there are occasions when it isn’t—when, instead, our perception is pushed in a direction that doesn’t really do justice to the nature of an artist’s work. And as even a first listen to Hellos, Goodbyes & Butterflies makes abundantly clear, the strength of Donna Hughes’ music lies in the way that it defies simple characterization—except to say that it is distinctively, uniquely hers.

Still, it’s not impossible to come up with a pithy way of describing the music here that points in the right directions, and perhaps the best shorthand for what’s going on here is to put it like this: when you hear Donna Hughes, when you listen to the fifteen songs that make up this generous collection, what you’re hearing is nothing more—and northing less—than a singer/songwriter fronting a bluegrass band.

In one respect, of course, that’s nothing new. Bill Monroe, the Father of Bluegrass, was himself a singer and a songwriter, as were Lester Flatt, Carter Stanley and Jesse McReynolds, and the music’s history is peppered with the names of singers who wrote much (though rarely all) of their own material. But it’s equally true that over the past several decades, the term “singer/songwriter” has taken on a kind of life of its own, denoting something more than simply an artist who sings what he or she has written. These days, it implies a kind of style, or family of styles, shaped by the folk revival of the 1960s and greats like Gordon Lightfoot and James Taylor, who combined a grounding in traditional forms with a myriad of more artful influences and a kind of direct emotionalism—and it’s in this other way, too, that it makes sense to speak of Donna Hughes as a singer/songwriter.

This approach to understanding Hughes’ music is easiest to grasp when applied to her songs. One might go no further than the fact that this is one of those rare instances where a bluegrass album is wholly self-written to get the point, but dig deeper—look at the way her lyrics are framed, or at the rumination of songs like “Autumn Leaves,” or at the construction of songs like “Butterfly,” “If I Had You” or “Longing For You”—and it becomes clear why producer J. D. Crowe offers up the laconically profound observation, “they’re different.”

Crowe’s looking mostly to the three chord staples of bluegrass when he points that out, but difference comes around on the other side, too. The singer/songwriter field is a crowded one, and if it’s sometimes unfairly caricatured as hopelessly precious and confessional, the stereotype has its roots in a certain truth. So Donna’s choice of bluegrass as the framework on which to build a career is more than a trivial one, and while it makes a kind of personal sense—thanks to her family, it’s an indelible part of her life—it makes a kind of musical one, too; the sturdy, simple forms of the music act as a guard against getting too withdrawn, too introspective and too complex. And indeed, no matter how different Hughes’ songs may sound from the genre’s hoariest chestnuts, they still have much in common with them—and there is, after all, a reason why those songs have survived while the efforts of so many less grounded singer/songwriters have faded into obscurity.

In much the same way, Donna’s approach to singing uniquely blends elements of both the singer/songwriter style and traditional bluegrass. There’s a melancholy cast to her voice that’s practically guaranteed to remind a bluegrass-friendly listener of Carter Stanley’s and Lynn Morris’ mournful restraint, but it draws equally deeply from the well of what are now generations of singer/songwriters who have learned to use the intimacy of the microphone to good effect. Not a conventionally spectacular voice, hers is a deft instrument that draws the listener in to focus on detail and delivers it with a precise impact.

With Crowe at the helm—an artist who has himself spent a lifetime turning the ebb and flow of competing musical impulses into a deep and brilliant catalog—Hellos, Goodbyes & Butterflies presents not one, but a whole series of balancing acts that make for some compelling musical moments. There is the balance of Hughes’ singer/songwriter flair with the grounding of bluegrass; the blend of haunting original melodies with traditional forms like the waltz of “Last Thing I Need”; the interior focus of songs like “Nothing Easy” contrasting with the story-telling of “Black Beard” and “Jesse”; the hard ‘grass drive of “Losing You” balanced with the country strains of “Mid-Life Crisis,” and more. And there’s the blend of familiar musicians like Barry Bales, Adam Steffey, Randy Kohrs, , Scott Vestal, Carl Jackson and Sonya Isaacs with less well-known, like fiddler Jenee Fleenor (a veteran of country singer Terri Clark’s band) and the husband-wife duo who constitute the core of Hughes’ road band, Brian and Maggie Stephens.

For those who have been watching Donna’s progress since she first began to write and sing—not that long ago, at least in the measured way the world of traditional music tends to count these things—this album is the fulfillment of a promise, bringing the best of her work to light in a way that does justice to both of the streams on which she’s drawn. To those who haven’t heard her before, it will serve as an introduction to one of the most interesting and distinctive artists working in the world of bluegrass, yet casting a glow that shines beyond it—and how often does one like that come along?

- Jon Weisberger, Cottontown, TN, March, 2010

Donna performing "Losing You" at the Lil John's Festival with Barry Bales, Jake Stargel, Aaron Ramsey & Trevor Watson

"Butterfly"

"Dr. Jekyl, Mr. Hyde"